Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps and the Library of Congress

One of the librarians at the Schaumburg Township District Library made me aware of a web location within the Library of Congress that provides a great deal of background information about the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps as well as the ability to easily see what Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps are within the Library of Congress on a State-by-State basis and a city/town level basis within a state.

If you happen to know that an ancestor lived in a particular town at a particular time, there may actually be a Sanborn Fire Insurance Map detailing all of the details of the dwelling site of an ancestor. The maps were in use from 1867 to 1970. You can see what the building shape of an ancestor looked like and what it was constructed from as well as knowing the dimensions. It is sort of like the equivalent of a Plat of Survey you do today on your own property to see the outline of a building and any other buildings on the property.

There is even some, although extremely limited, availability of some online Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps from the Library of Congress website on this subject. The site mentions that there are over 3,000 Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps available online through the Library of Congress.

While the site may offer very limited access to online Sanborn Fire Insurance maps, the site does provide a great deal of online information about the fire insurance maps in general. You can really learn a great deal about what this great genealogy resource really is.

Here are some of the Topics available from the Library of Congress site on interpreting Sanborn Maps:

Keys and Colors

Symbols

Title Pages

Reports

Scales

Sheet Numbering

Indexes

Line Styles

Abbreviations

Congested Districts

Publication Dates

Water Systems

Under the category “Essays” about the Sanborn Maps you will find the following at the Library of Congress site:

Introduction to the Collection by Dr. Walter Ristow

Sanborn Samplers by Gary Fitzpatrick

Sanborn Time Series by Gary Fitzpatrick

Under the category “Other” for the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps at the Library of Congress you will find the following”

Related Resources

About the Collection

FAQs

Copyright and Restrictions

When you select a state to see what maps exist for a state you will find long, long lists of towns for that state. You can click on the town name and another window opens up providing you with information on what exists within the Library of Congress for Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. Again, the vast majority of material exists within the LOC and not online.

When you are looking at the list of towns within a state, the LOC indicates that a particular town has online maps available by noting the town with an asterisk “*”. When I browsed through the towns for Illinois, I saw one town with an asterisk. That was for Tampico. So do not expect to gain access to these maps online. You will at least be able to determine that the LOC has a Sanborn Map for a particular town and for a particular year in their collection.

I just found that the site is probably more valuable for all of the knowledge it conveys about the Sanborn Maps. This alone cans educate you about this great resource. Use the site for that. Anything that may be available online is just a bonus.

If you were not aware of Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps as a resource tool for your genealogy research then take a look at the material from the Library of Congress from the link earlier on in this post.

If you were aware of this as a resource I still think the material from the site can certainly make you more aware at a detailed level about all there is to really know and understand about these Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps.